Monthly Archives: January 2008

Did you know that frogs and some reptiles can be hypnotized? I knew this when I was very young and discovered that I could hypnotize toads. I called them hypno-toads, and I thought that I had some kind of magic powers for being able to do this.

Turns out that small reptiles and amphibians can be hypnotized because they use more muscles in their torso to breathe rather than relying hugely on their diaphragms. So, when you flip a frog or toad onto its back, the unnatural weight of the inverted muscles makes it difficult for them to breathe so they go into an energy-saving hypno-state. At least that’s what the internet said.

We decided to hypnotize one or both of the frogs and then place them in a sacrificial pentagram with the rocks we collected on the beach where we went to the ruins of the Civil War fort in Watch Hill.

This is what we did, with Jon taking the pictures and me being the hypnotist. We were kind of half-assed about the altar we made.

It turns out that if you leave the frogs hypnotized and unattended too long, they wake up. The Frog (not to be confused with The Other Frog) woke up and made a beeline for the nearest body of water he could find (we had set up the altar on the kitchen countertop):

I was worried that milky cereal water might not be the best thing for him, plus I more urgently feared he might slide down the drain, but he looked so damn cute and so serene once he landed in the bowl that I had to take his picture. I debated whether I should use the carefully planned Satanic Frog Sacrifice picture as the photo of the day or this charming picture that happened by accident.* No amphibians were harmed in the making of these pictures. This was last night and as of today, both frogs seem blissfully forgetful of the incident.